If anyone's curious, the aesthetic change was motivated by a shift in what is considered the pinnacle of athletic performance by the general public and especially children. In the 1930s it would have been carnival acrobats and strong-men, who wore tight outfits designed to show off muscles and make their limbs distinct from their torso during tricks (thus the briefs).

Not a lot of carnival attendees among the younger comics fans nowadays, but everyone's played video games with spec ops soldiers, so the current metaphor for absurd athleticism is light body armor. Thus, everything has panels, sometimes scaled or plated, and you see a lot more in the way of sleeves and long pants that don't necessarily conform to the body beneath.

You have to use iconography that actually means something to connect with your audience, you can only coast on "well, people will know it from the other stuff" for so long, it's amazing even Superman got away with it as long as it did.

QT_3.14159:Vaneshi: It's good that the film at least threw that in, sure Reeve was by some accounts a bit of a dick before his accident but as far as portraying the duality of the character... yeah he pretty much hit the nail on the head. You couldn't tell from his performance that Clark was anything other than a fairly nice guy from the American mid-west.

Now I've not seen Man of Steel yet but hopefully the new actor can pull off both parts of the role just as well.

The movie is about him becoming superman, so he hasn't separated out the two personas yet. If you want to see if he can play "Clark Kent" as Reeves played him, you'll have to wait for the next film.

I have a feeling it won't be quite as distinct as Reeves played it, but I think he's very believable so far.

The scene in the original Superman, where C. Reeves is in Lois Lane's flat and goes from meek Clark Kent to Superman, and then back to Kent, is one of the most underrated piece of acting, and shows how Reeves was the absolute best choice at the time to play the role.